


Sons of True Love, Sons of Regret

by A M Sinclair (phoebesmum)



Category: Quantum Leap
Genre: Developing Relationship, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-28
Updated: 2011-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-21 20:52:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/229733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoebesmum/pseuds/A%20M%20Sinclair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's Leaping takes him to many dark and dangerous places, but none more difficult than the human heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sons of True Love, Sons of Regret

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published in _Present Tense_ , AAA Press, circa 1995.

_Sons of the thief, sons of the saint:  
Who is the child with no complaint?  
Sons of true love, sons of regret -  
All of your sons you can never forget ...  
The same sweet smiles, the same sad tears,  
The cries at night, the nightmare fears;  
Sons of the great and sons unknown  
All were children, like your own._

 

 _Part I: September 13, 1978_

I come out of the Leap at a run, my arms outstretched in front of me, my voice completing a cry of warning. I'm carried forward by the impetus, am given no time to take stock of my surroundings; my first awareness of danger comes when I hear the blare of a horn almost in my ear, and I turn my head toward the sound just as the truck hits me ...

... throws me into the air, sends me flying, spinning, helpless and uncontrolled: a few short seconds of real time that stretch into an eternity of fear; an eternity of fear that's condensed into a nanosecond of hell ...

... and I land in a jumble of broken limbs: bones shattered, flesh torn, nerves crushed. I scream, I think, or somebody does, a high-pitched tearing sound, barely human; and then, once again, only the dark.

* * *

Whiteness all around me when I wake. Immobility; pain. If not for that, I might think myself between Leaps, floating in that void that I scarcely remember, have no time to remember once united with a host body. I have no awareness of self, can neither move nor speak, my vision limited to the area directly above and ahead of me, and that blurred. I lie still, having no other option. Lie still, and wait.

For what?

For whom?

My heartbeats mark the passing of time; slow, oh, so slow. Each moment is a lifetime of pain, pain so intense that I can hardly think: it fills my awareness, I can remember nothing else. Only this, this wrench of white fire, exists, has ever existed, or ever will ...

 _Why?_

Gradually, distantly, I become aware of the need to take stock of my situation, such as it is.

 _I must be here for a purpose ..._

To save a life?

No. If that were all, then I would have Leaped out as soon as I hit the ground.

Then, perhaps, to bear another's pain. To die his death?

Again - _why?!_

And, if so ... then what happens next?

 _What will happen to me if I die?_

Not a theological question. A purely practical one. Would I remain dead, here in my past? Or would my body somehow be returned to the place from which it all began

 _(Was **that** the price of my return home?)_

\- materialise in the Waiting Room or in the Accelerator only to receive a hasty, furtive burial amidst a flurry of official denials -

 _(And who would there be to mourn for me?)_

\- putting the final nail in the coffin of Project Quantum Leap, setting the stage for another bureaucratic cover-up ...?

Or might I instead be brought back to that place of healing and brightness, and from there continue to Leap as though nothing had ever happened?

Or even, perhaps, be permitted to Leap onward to my own time, miraculously healed?

Somehow that seems too much to hope for.

I force my mind to function, to rationalise, reason, remember, but there are too many lifetimes behind my eyes, and they blur and jumble, confusing me. I am old and I am young, a man, then a woman: crowds cheer me, mobs turn against me, I am praised and reviled in the same breath. I am hero and victim, knight and pawn and king; I am a beggar and a benefactor, a dragon-slaying saint one moment, a frightened child the next ...

But never before so helpless.

And never before alone ...

I have no voice; words will not form in my throat, my lips cannot shape the sounds. I whisper his name silently, begging that somehow, impossibly, someone will hear ...

 _"Al ...?"_

Nothing. Only the silence replies.

* * *

And again, time passes; long stretches of agonised monotony interspersed with moments of brief nightmare when tubes are replaced, dressings changed, my body's needs attended to by flat-voiced, hard-handed strangers who avoid eye contact as though I were not a crash victim but a carrier of plague.

I have been a doctor, I remember; I turned my back on all of the more prestigious establishments that I could have chosen, and interned in St Benedict's in downtown Chicago, an underfunded turn-of-the-century monstrosity, crumbling and struggling and decaying like the city around it. I have fought my fair share of emergency room battles against the results of drink and drugs, hatred and neglect, carelessness and even, sometimes, simple misfortune. I remember the reason for the detachment, remember how hard it came to me. _Think of it as a suit of armour_ , one of my instructors had told me, and, slowly, I had learned how close that was to the truth. If you gave way to pity, to horror or distress, if you allowed yourself the briefest flash of empathy with even half of the broken bodies and fractured souls that you encountered in a shift - you wouldn't last out a week. You think of your patients as case numbers, or in terms of their injuries. You _have_ to. Only when they're on the road to recovery dare you begin to consider them as _people_. Sometimes not even then.

And the ones who never recover?

Those ... those ones you try not to think about at all.

I know this. I understand it.

But this is _me_ , and reason is the last thing on my mind. I don't want cold, hard, pragmatic logic. I want to hear a word of kindness; need to feel a touch on my hand that is something more than merely practical.

I _hurt_. And I am alone.

* * *

 _What am I here to do? What can I change - like **this?**_

Throughout the time _(years?)_ that I've been Leaping I have come to believe that I've been guided; that some nameless, unnameable force has been controlling me, bringing me to nexus points in strangers' lives, always to some crucial moment of change where _my_ acquired skills or my physical strength or, sometimes, even just my foreknowledge of the future has been able to affect those lives, and the ones around them. Affect them for the better, or so I'm always told: I have saved lives, reconciled lovers, fought corruption and injustice, righted wrongs ... rescued a stray dog or two, saved a kitten from drowning, inspired the lyrics to _**Peggy Sue**_ ...

I've always believed - chosen to believe, _needed_ to believe - that that force is a benevolent one; that I'm working on the side of the angels.

Now, for the first time, I find myself in doubt.

This Leap, if it _is_ a Leap, has all the hallmarks of a cruel cosmic joke. With me as the fallguy.

And when I fall ... ah, then I fall hard. Oh, so very hard.

* * *

Night on the ward.

How can I tell? The lights are always dimmed, the voices and footfalls hushed. There is no distinction here between night and day. We're in the business of saving lives; we don't keep office hours.

But I know without needing to be told, without knowing that I know. They call it the graveyard shift, these hours between the ending of the old day and the dawning of the new, and they call it that for a reason. Three o'clock in the morning. It's the time when all the world gives way to despair, when suicides make their last bitter decision, when the old and the sick give up their tenuous hold on life. Death's own hour, the hour when he reigns supreme.

 _Not me. Not for me. Not yet ..._

I hold the thought in my mind, picturing it clear and faceted like a crystal ...

... that dulls and blurs, becoming formless, shapeless, as the drugs pumping through my veins work through my system and the pain returns to encompass and fill my world.

 _Would it be so unwelcome, after all? If **this** ... is all there is?_

 _Better, perhaps, to die than to live a life that is no life, shattered and in pain._

I had not thought so once. Back then, back in medical school, back at St Benedict's. Death was the ultimate failure; life the victory prize, whatever the cost. So long as hearts could beat, lungs expand, so long could _life_ continue. Even if the heart, the lungs, continued to function only by reason of being connected to a machine. There were battles being fought every day over just such cases, redrawing criteria and redefining borders.

 _When does 'hope' become futility? When does 'mercy' become monstrosity?_

One of the senior staff had been a crusader for euthanasia. I still remember how I had fought with him, argued at every given opportunity; once even called him a murderer. And had testified against him when, years later, he was accused of professional misconduct. Had been proud to do so.

Oh, god, I had been such a know-it-all then, such a cocky, sanctimonious little shit. Why hadn't someone kicked me?

They had, of course, and it had made no difference. I had been so sure of myself, so confident of my moral ground, so smugly aware of my own genius. How could _I_ , Sam Beckett, the boy wonder - how could _I_ be wrong?

But I had. I had been wrong. Utterly, awfully, unforgivably wrong.

 _Define 'life'. Is it merely the virtue of not yet being dead?_

 _Or is there some deeper implication?_

 _What am **I** living now?_

 _ **Why** ...?_

* * *

Morning; a new day, full of promise and anticipation and hope.

Heralded, for me, not by a chorus of birdsong, the brightening of the horizon, but by the arrival of a bevy of grim-faced women in sensible shoes, who repeat the procedures of the previous night and then leave me propped like a rag doll against my pillows, powerless but at least presentable. Ready, I register, for the doctors' rounds. Oh, how I remember this! This was worse, if anything, than actually working on the wards, following on the heels of the physician in charge as he went from bed to bed, marking up the roster of human misery. A cheery word here, a companionable pat on the arm there, and then on to the next case, trading one set of wounded, pleading eyes for another, and then another, on and on, over and over, the same routine, the same gestures, no variation, no change, no escape.

Except that, for us, there was. We, the students - we got to go home at night. We were here by choice.

 _No longer._

Footsteps in the corridor outside. Heavy, determined strides, the steps of a man who knows exactly where he's going, and exactly how to get there; and, following him, the shuffle of many other feet, soft-soled, filing after in dutiful, sycophantic submission. The door opens and suddenly the empty room is filled with moving, breathing, sweating, living bodies, their muted whispers loud as any shriek, the rustling of their regulation white coats like the fall of leaves in some distant primæval forest. Eyes closed, I am aware of their presence, like static on the skin.

Eyes closed, I still can see their faces.

See, in particular, _one_ face, toward the back of the group. One face, eyes wide in confusion, body still and rigid with horror. A face that I know, eyes that I know, a body that used to be familiar to me as my own ...

Once _was_ my own ...

 _No-one has come to me here. I don't know where I am. I don't know what year this is._

 _But I'm guessing that it's 1978. I'm twenty four years old, coming on twenty five._

 _And I'm here, here in Chicago, Illinois, working on my third - my third? My fourth? - degree. My medical degree, the one that I took because I suddenly realised that quantum physics held only half the answers_

 _I don't even remember what the question was._

 _I don't remember this, either. I remember walking the wards, but I don't ever remember pulling back the curtains and seeing **me** ..._

 _But then ... **then** , it didn't happen that way._

I don't know why it has happened now. But I try to turn my head toward him, toward _me_ ; try to smile.

Fail. Nothing responds. My body, _this_ body, is paralysed, already dead. And the mind that belongs to it ...

... is Leaping ...

* * *

 _Part II: January 5, 1983_

The spinning stops; the white light fades, becomes a dimmer, dingier white. I'm walking - have to stop, adjust, catch my balance, then carry on as naturally as I can - walking, walking along a hospital corridor, a great mass of hothouse flowers clutched between sweating palms. I'm on my way to visit someone; someone I either care for very much or feel very guilty about - unless I'm just the delivery boy ...? I look down, check what I'm wearing: black jeans, a charcoal-grey cashmere sweater, a black and white checked kaffiyeh knotted artistically about my shoulders. Low-key; expensive. To my inexpert eyes, moderately chic. And definitely not a uniform. So I guess I'm delivering on my own behalf.

To whom? And why?

And how am I going to find out what room they're in?

Oh, boy ...

* * *

I had to face it: I was lost. So now what was I going to do? Head back down to the reception desk? _"Excuse me, can you remind me again who it is I'm supposed to be visiting?"_ Ah, god, some days I hate Leaping. Admitting it gets me nowhere, so I try to make the best of a bad deal, but ... it gets to me sometimes, you know?

My current location didn't help improve my frame of mind. I know this is ironic, given that I'm supposed to be a doctor and all, but I don't like hospitals. Hate them, in fact. Too many people I've known, too many people I've cared about, have gone into hospital and never come home again. Don't ask me who: I couldn't tell you if you did. I only know it's true.

 _And I remembered ... helplessness and fear and pain, the longing for release, no matter what the cost ..._

The stark white light and the stench of antiseptic death caught me by the throat, sending a chill of panic through me: the sense of misery, of impotence, of defeat, that seemed engrained in the walls, carried on the air like bacteria. I stopped mid-stride, caught myself against the wall, forced myself to breathe evenly. _Don't quit on me **now** , Beckett!_

"Hey, Matthew."

It was addressed to me, so I looked up and essayed a small smile. "Hi," I said.

She was a middle-aged Latina: olive skin, greying black hair, snapping black eyes, a heavy-breasted body oozing out of K-Mart jeans and a cotton smock top that she'd bought when she was a size and a half smaller; but her smile made me think of coming in from the cold after shovelling snow at midwinter and finding that Mom had made hot chocolate with marshmallows. So what could I do but smile back?

She nodded toward the flowers. "Very nice, _querido_. Very tasteful." And, eyebrows lifted, "Are those orchids that I see?"

I touched a finger to a fragile dark-mauve petal. "Slipper orchids," I confirmed.

 _Someone I had known (once upon a time) had loved slipper orchids; I had bought them for her every year in January and it had cost me a fortune ... but I had not accounted a penny of it wasted ..._

The smile segued into a moue of mild disapproval. "You spoil that boy, Matthew. You're gonna make him think he's dead already. He don't need that."

"I care about him," was all I could think of to say. Whoever _he_ was, it seemed that Matthew did.

"We all _care_ about him," she said darkly. "Just, some of us show it different ways. That's all." She paused, as if waiting for something. What, I had no idea. I just kept on smiling politely, frozenly. Then it occurred to me that she had been coming _back_ down the corridor ...

"And how about you?" I offered. "How's ...?" I let it stretch, praying that she would pick up the pass.

She did. Picked it up and ran with it. "Felipe? He's good today, he's much better. Pray god, we'll have him home again before the summer comes." Her eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. "You know that's all he's asked for - one last summer, down at the beach ... he loves the beach house so much, loves to watch the sea ..."

I took an automatic step toward her, put my free arm around her shoulders. "He'll have it," I told her, trying to convey a weight of conviction when the truth was I had no idea what I was talking about at all, was only saying what I thought I could, what I thought she would want to hear. "Believe in that. Just keep believing."

Her chest heaved against mine as she sighed; she pulled herself away, shook herself upright; smiled again. "You're a good boy, Matthew. When this is all over ... maybe you and I oughta get together ... no?" She fluttered coquettish eyelashes at me.

I threw her what I hoped was an equally charming smile. "I'd like that," I said, and she roared with laughter, slapping me on the back until I almost dropped the flowers. As I fumbled to catch them, I glanced up, ahead down the corridor -

"Al!"

The woman started, looked at me, then back over her shoulder. Then she looked at me again.

"Al?"

"Ah …" I smiled lamely. "I thought I saw a, a friend …"

She shook her head, smiled kindly, patted my shoulder. "Maybe take it slower, huh, Matthew? Leave the hallucinations to the sick folk, okay?"

I smiled as she walked by me. "Okay," I agreed, and I headed on up the corridor to where my hologram was waiting, watching me worriedly.

"Sam ... I know it's lonely out here for you, but we gotta do something about your taste in women ..."

I looked him fondly up and down. "Says the Taste Police?" My usual protestations aside, a lot of the time I'm deeply impressed by the outrages of Al's wardrobe - if only by the guts it must take to wear some of it. Truth to tell, I don't know how he carries it off, but most of the time he looks pretty damn good. And he's never less than _memorable._

Today, though, he was wearing that suit with the yellow checked jacket. Even _I_ have problems forgiving him for that one. And I'm his best friend. Supposed to be. Which reminded me ...

"So, what kept you?"

I'm not always the best at expressing what I have to say. My mind works faster than my mouth - or at least, that's what Tom used to say (though let any _other_ kid tease me about my childhood stammer, and Tom would leave them wishing they hadn't). Give me a keyboard and I can usually get my point across, one way or another, but words - words don't always come easily. Sometimes there's too much that needs to be said. Which is how _Al, thank god you're here, I was so afraid that you wouldn't show up and I'd have to do without you, I don't even know if I **can** do without you, and I'm so sorry that I ever stepped into the Accelerator without consulting you so that you have to keep on running around after me, and spend half your life in the Imaging Chamber, when I know there must be a million things that you'd rather be doing, and I can't even imagine what it must be like back at the Project, trying to keep things going single-handed and having to deal with the Committee and god knows what-all else, thank you for being a friend and for standing by me and for giving up your life to me_ somehow gets garbled somewhere along the way and ends up coming out as _where the hell have you been?!_

But the fact is, I _don't_ know if I could make it without him. Not just for the information he brings me - the _when_ and the _why_ and sometimes even the _how_ of every Leap - but for something far less tangible. For his support; his encouragement. For the lifeline he provides, his presence a link between my _here_ and my home. For the reminder that I do _have_ a home, a place of my own, a place that I can look forward to returning to ... one day. Maybe. For that hope, faint and faraway as it sometimes seems. And for his company. His friendship.

I remember - don't I? - a Leap, maybe more than one Leap, where I thought that I _had_ lost him. I know I remember the upwelling of joy inside of me when, against all expectation, I next saw him waiting for me. I remember how, even knowing I shouldn't, I reached automatically out to pull him into a hug ...

And I remember how lost and empty I had felt, believing that I would never see him again.

I didn't remember the details of that Leap. I seldom do recall the Leaps; some details of a few, others not at all, or only hazily, with maybe the occasional brief flash of remembrance. I think that, if I tried to remember, I might go crazy - if I haven't already done so. Too many existences, too many realities, too many timelines, altered, shifting, changing, all of them buried somewhere deep within my psyche, awaiting their turn to be recalled into life ...

Verbeena Beeks is going to have a field day the day I finally Leap home.

Al was looking wounded. "Kept me? _Kept_ me? You just got here!"

 _Oh, boy ..._

"I didn't mean here."

He raised his eyebrows, cocked his head to one side; waited, not asking.

"There was another Leap ..."

He was shaking his head now. "Not for us." He hesitated, and a wary look crossed his face - a look I recognised: his _shall I tell him, or shan't I?_ look.

"Al ..." I said warningly.

He gave one of those quintessentially Italian shrugs that involves the entire upper body and implies something along the lines of _ah, what the hell, they can only kill me once_. "It's been almost two weeks since your last Leap," he admitted, gruff-voiced. I knew what that tone meant. He'd been worried sick, and wasn't going to admit it to save his life. "And three days ago ... Ziggy stopped tracking your brainwave patterns. We thought you - " He stopped himself just in time. "Things got interesting. You ever see a biohybrid computer panic?"

I thought about it. "Tell me," I offered.

"Like a coloratura soprano on acid," he said. "My ears are still ringing." He shrugged again, less expansively this time. "Well. We found you." He looked a question at me, as though he had only just registered my earlier words. "Another Leap?"

I shuddered. "More like a nightmare," I said feelingly. "Maybe that's all it was ..."

It seemed more likely by the minute. No matter which way I turned it, I couldn't figure out the logic. It would have been bad enough if there _had_ been a displaced person in the Waiting Room to have been returned to my hospital bed, apparently magically cured of all his injuries. But if I had Leaped in as _myself_ ...

No. I'd file it under 'nightmare' until some more reasonable explanation came along.

But it was strange that I should have retained it into _this_ Leap.

"Forget it," I finally decided. "What'm I doing here? Other than delivering flowers ...?"

He flipped up the handlink, slapped the screen a couple of times, seemingly just as a matter of form. The machine squealed, on cue, and he started reading off information.

"... Matthew Beaumont, aged thirty five, concert pianist ..."

"Been there," I murmured, "done that."

He scowled up at me. "So? You can do it again, okay? The floral tribute is for someone named Robert Delinsky, who's a close personal friend ..."

I breathed a muted sigh; this was something I _did_ remember. "I think you mean 'lover', don't you?" I said quietly. And, as he glanced up at me, I asked him, "Is that going to be a problem for you?"

It was his turn to sigh. He did it a lot louder.

"Sam," he said patiently, "I know, I know. I said a lot of dumb things. Sometimes I say dumb things just to watch you react; other times ... well, other times, I just say dumb things. I apologise, okay? Jesus, isn't there a statute of limitations?"

I smiled wryly. "I wouldn't know," I said. "Linear time doesn't really apply to me much any more."

"H'm," he said, and checked with the handlink again. "Well, if you really want to know, that was in 1964. We're in 1983 now, and times have changed." He winced delicately. "If you don't mind my saying so ..." He gave the handlink another little shake. "Okay, we're naming names, he's your lover, this is New York, it's January 1983, and ..." It was bad news; I could tell by the darkness in his eyes. Not that I needed to. I had already begun to guess.

"Robert's here to die," I said. The words hung starkly in the air, ugly and ominous as graffiti. "AIDS." I looked down at my hands where they clenched about the flower stems. "Do I have it too?"

"Matthew," he said, too quickly. "Does _Matthew_ have it. No. He doesn't. He was tested last month, came up negative." His lips quirked into an ironic smile devoid of humour. "You see, Robert didn't catch it through sexual contact. From what Matthew told Verbeena before I came down here, the two of them have been together ... been a couple, _married_ , he says, for the past five years. Last year Robert was mugged walking home one night, had to have some pretty major surgery. He never really recovered, started going downhill fast soon after, had his first bout of pneumonia a couple of months later, and ... well, that was all she wrote. Matthew thinks he was given contaminated blood." He flipped off the handlink, stowed it away in his breast pocket, pulled out a cigar instead. He didn't light it; just turned it over and over in his hand, staring at it absently. "They can't prove it. They never do prove it. Matthew quit trying to, in the end. He couldn't afford the legal costs ... he's still active," he went on. "Still fighting. After Robert died, he pretty much dedicated his life, his career, to the campaign. Never ... never married again." He looked at me sombrely. "He really loves him," he said.

I turned so that he wouldn't see my face, began walking. "Is that why I'm here?"

Another small squeal behind me indicated that he'd brought out the handlink again.

"Low odds on that," he eventually announced. "1983 ... it's still early in the war, Sam. There are still people out there trying to tell us that AIDS doesn't exist, or if it does, it doesn't matter. They won't start screening bloodbanks for a while."

I shot a glance back over my shoulder. "What _do_ you have odds on?"

His eyes met mine in perfect sympathy; his voice was very gentle as he said, "He wants to go home, Sam."

* * *

If there's one aspect of Leaping that bothers me, really bothers me, it's this: this aspect of invading other people's lives, making their decisions for them, deciding their destinies. Think about it: what right do _I_ have to let _[a]_ believe that _[b]_ loves him, her, when, for all I know, _[b]_ has never given _[a]_ a thought, and never will? That's one of the reasons, maybe the only reason, I go along with the theory that some kind of a nebulous deity is controlling our Leaps. If I believed in that deity, that would rationalise everything: _oh, that's okay then, this was **meant**_. Never mind that I am, I used to be, a scientist, and that that kind of fuzzy thinking is not only atypical but repugnant. And never mind the stray thought that keeps trying to break through: well, if it was _meant_ , then fine, okay ... only ... who screwed up the first time ...?

And when I turned the handle on the hospital room door, opened the door, stepped inside; when Robert's eyes, huge and dilated in his gaunt white face, searched me out from across the room and locked on to mine; when his blistered lips cracked into a smile as wide and warm and welcoming as summertime in the Indiana heartlands ...

For a moment my heart died inside me and I stood there frozenly, my hand still on the door, my own eyes holding his, my own lips matching his smile ...

 _He has three days to live. And I'm lying to him, cheating him, cheating Matthew. They have so little time left together ... what am **I** doing here?_

I have to believe. Believe that _this_ was meant to be. Because, if not - how could I stand to live with myself? How could I bear to go on?

I made myself let go; crossed the room to him. Managed a more natural smile, one that didn't feel like a death rictus. Laid the flowers across his bedcover. Yet more flowers; I understood now what the woman had meant. The room was filled with them, the air drenched in their scent, heavy and cloying; they spilled out of vases on windowsills, on the nightstand, on every available flat surface, a rainbow profusion of rioting reds and oranges and pinks, of every shade of purple from palest lilac to almost-black, of russet and yellow and white. They had been brought here with love, as ammunition in the war against bleakness and apathy and despair, but their sheer lavishness somehow countermanded the effect they should have had, somehow intensified the dinginess of their surroundings. It was as though Robert were dead already and in the funeral home, dead and laid out and surrounded by memorial wreaths.

I kept the smile on my face, with an effort.

"More flowers. Just in case you happen to run short."

He reached out a trembling hand, ran a finger across a petal.

"Orchids." And his mouth curved warmly, lovingly. "You remembered."

 _Oh, god, forgive me!_ "How could I forget?" I said lightly, and I leaned forward and brushed my lips across his pale cheek. "How're you doing today?"

"I have my moments." His hand moved from the flowers, up to clasp around my wrist. I laid my other hand over it, willing him my strength; his voice was so faint, I had to strain to hear it. "Great start. _Cute_ orderly." He mimed a swoon, then peeped flirtatiously up at me under what remained of his lashes. "Jealous?"

"This place is a lot less safe than I'd thought," I told him severely, and watched the smile flicker again. "Anything else I should know?"

He twisted uncomfortably, turned onto his side, suddenly sullen. "He cares more than you do. _He_ looks after me."

I looked silently across to Al where he hovered, ill-at-ease but watchful, just inside the door.

"Matthew cared for him at home as long as he could do, Sam," he told me, without needing to check. This, he knew. "He only had him moved here when he thought he couldn't manage any more on his own. He doesn't have any medical training ... and, you know, it's hard to watch someone you love ... watch them deteriorate, see them slip a little more every day ..."

 _Your father, Al?_ I wondered, hearing the wounds unhealed behind the words. _Or ... who? One of your wives? Or someone else that you loved, someone else who left you ...?_

"He's bigger than me," I said aloud. "I bet. Muscles? Yeah?" I rolled up my sleeve, clenched a fist in the air. "How many times did I drop you?"

His head snapped back toward me with a force I hadn't thought him capable of. "I didn't care. I _don't_ care. You can drop me as often as you like, if you'll only pick me up again after. If you'll only .... only _hold_ me ..." His voice was breaking, weak and thready; he reached up trembling arms toward me. " _Hold_ me, Matthew ..."

What could I do? There was no Matthew; there was only me. And, inadequate as I felt, I would have to be enough. And so I reached for him, gathered him into my arms, held him against my heart; rocked him gently, like a child, my hands stroking the sparse strands of his fair hair until he quieted; murmured to him, soft, reassuring nonsense, promises of love, of Matthew's love, Matthew's love that had kept his memory, Robert's memory, alive down all the empty days since he went away ... the endless, barren, lonely days that, somehow, I seemed to know so well ...

He was speaking; trying to speak. Whispering, halting, so that I had to strain to hear.

"White walls, grey windows, green scrubs, grey people." He clutched at my sleeve. "It's _ugly_ , Matt. It eats into your soul. How can anything live in this place, how can they expect you to get well? _Functional_ ," he spat feebly. " _Utilitarian_. Oh, god, Matt, I feel like I'm a character in a Russian play ..." His chest was heaving, lungs fighting for breath. I held him closer still, aching to comfort him - somehow, anyhow; burning with shame for the debt I owed him.

" _ **Three Sisters**?_ " I asked him, somehow keeping my voice light. "Are you yearning for Moscow, Robert?"

" _ **The Lower Depths**_ ," he whispered. "No cherry trees. No seagulls. Nothing beautiful. Matthew, I want to go home. Take me home, Matt. Don't let me die in a place that eats your soul ..."

It was my own prayer, my own plea: _don't let me die, unbelonging, unknowing; don't leave me here to die among strangers ..._

How could I deny him the last thing he wanted?

"I'll make the arrangements," I told him, and set him back down against the pillows. I hoped I sounded competent, confident; I felt anything but. But, after all this time, living a lie is second nature to me. "You rest." I folded my hands around his. "Sleep, if you can. You'll need it."

He looked at me suspiciously. So did Al.

"When you see the place," I explained seriously. "It's a mess. See, I figured, what the hell, it's just me ... who's gonna know if I never wash the dishes again?"

Al grinned. So, somehow, did Robert.

"Matt - " said Robert, at the same moment as Al said, "Sam - "

And together, in involuntary chorus, they said, "When the hell did _you_ ever wash dishes?!"

* * *

They lived, _we_ lived in an atelier in SoHo, its conversion and transformation one of Robert's early triumphs. The place blazed with life, a vivid testimonial to its creator's genius - and a stark contrast to the dreariness that Matthew had, with all good intentions, condemned him to, that I had saved him from. I _felt_ the difference as we crossed the threshold, as Robert looked eagerly around himself, drinking in the sight of his own place, his own possessions, his own home; felt the despair lift, the listlessness shift into excitement.

"Can I sit up?" he demanded. "I want to watch daytime TV till my mind _rots_ , and I want you to sit with me and hold my hand." His eyes fastened on mine. "Can I? Will you? You don't have to be anywhere ...?"

I wheeled him through the living room and on into the bedroom; lifted him onto his bed and adjusted the angle of the headrest until he seemed to be lying comfortably. "We'll watch it in here," I told him, and flipped on a station at random. "Does it _have_ to be the soaps?"

"If I don't find out whether Leona's baby is really Ted's or Donald's, and who's been making the anonymous calls to Shelley to tell her that her father's a retired Mafia hitman, I'm just gonna _die_ ," he stated; then his hand shot to his mouth. "Oh, god, Matthew, I'm so _sorry!_ "

The words could scarcely have hit harder had I really been his lover. I made myself exhale slowly, relaxing muscle by muscle; shook my head. "Don't be. I'm ... I should've got used to the idea ..." I could feel tears behind my eyes; I blinked them away. "I guess I never will."

He reached out to me. "Don't. Don't, Matt. Don't ever accept it. _I_ have; I know it's as good as over for me. But _you_ have to go on fighting. Someone has to keep the flame alive ... for those of us who can't."

"It isn't _fair_ ," I heard myself say, and almost laughed out loud. I sounded like a petulant six-year-old. _Fair_. I could almost hear Al's voice in response to _that_ one.

 _"Not a hell of a whole lot in this world **is** fair, kid. No point in beating yourself up over it."_

No sense in whining and bitching and griping and complaining. Not when we, when Robert, had so little time. Better, surely, to give him something of value to take down with him into the darkness.

"So, where do I find Leona and Shelley and Ted and all the rest of them?" I asked, flipping channels rapidly. Pity the poor alien that comes to Earth and tries to understand our culture from watching TV: how could they help but end up under the delusion that half the world is populated by energetic women in Lycra, the rest by earnest men in Brooks Brothers suits who want people to tell them their problems? I paused on a Chuck Jones cartoon _("Oh, Great Leader, on this planet Terra small ducks chase men with rifles ..."_ ), moved on quickly when I became conscious of Robert's puzzled stare. "If that's what you want?"

He turned his head tiredly away from the screen. "I don't know. Maybe not." His hand reached, fumbling, toward mine, took the remote from me, blanked the screen. "Will you play for me?"

"Play?" I looked at him blankly for a moment, then registered what he meant. My head swivelled back toward the living room; I had had hardly enough time to take stock of its contents, only had a hazy overall impression of brick walls, wood-beamed ceilings, panelled floors thrown with woven rugs, amber and ochre and umber, that were echoed by wallhangings and drapes and cushions ... and, yes, one whole wall had been taken up by a bank of state-of-the-art stereo equipment ... and, yes, set far enough away from the windows to avoid draughts, close enough to benefit from the fall of daylight, there had been a piano, a baby grand piano ...

"Play," I said again, understanding now. _Yes_ , I remembered, _this is something that I can do. This is something that I can do for him_. "Sure. Of course." I slid to my feet, stood looking down at him, flexing my hands. "Any requests?"

He rolled his head slowly from side to side; he looked tired, his face waxen, drained of blood. I wondered whether it had, after all, been a mistake to bring him here. "Whatever. I just want to hear you again ... Matt?"

"What?"

"Please don't crack your knuckles."

"I'm sorry," I said. I went out into the living area, leaving the door open so that the sound could carry. I crossed to the piano and lifted its rosewood cover, running down the keys in an experimental arpeggio; breathed a faint sigh of relief to find that it was in perfect tune. I _could_ have played it if not, but it would have gone very much against the grain.

There were photographs hanging on the walls among the tapestries and the art prints, standing framed on the mantel: photographs of two young men, handsome and healthy and only too clearly very much in love. The dark-haired man I knew, from catching my reflection in windows, and from the mirror in the bathroom. The other ... the other I could only assume had been Robert.

I am a child of my generation; I have grown up with images of horror: Auschwitz, Hiroshima. But to a farmer's son in Elk Ridge, Indiana, such nightmares seem the stuff of science fiction, unconnected to any world that I might call my own.

I left Elk Ridge a long time ago; the naïve boy that I was has grown, become a man. Time and experience have weathered me, the world's battles left their scars; I can no longer be called an innocent, not in any sense of the word.

But _this_ ... this ruin, this waste, this human tragedy ... this was too much. It was more than I could take.

Or might have been, had it been only my needs that I had to consider. But _my_ needs have long been relegated to second place, at best.

This Leap was for _Robert_ ; and, if he could face the awareness of what had been done to him with such relative calm, then what could I do but support him, gift him with whatever strength I may have?

My strengths ... and my talents. Music, he had asked for. Music, then, he would have.

I remembered ... another Leap where I had been a concert pianist, where the man had been blind, where I had had to rely on Al to tell me what to play. No such problem this time: Matthew had music. What I had taken at first glance for a shelf of encyclopædias or some such thing, turned out on closer inspection to be an entire row packed tight with bound scores. I pulled out the first one that came to hand: a volume of Chopin Preludes. Good enough ...

"That's nice, Sam," Al's voice said quietly, a few paces behind me. I missed a note, caught myself up rapidly.

"Thanks." I looked up at him as he moved around to stand in front of me. "So ... Robert's home. Why am I still here?"

He wouldn't meet my eyes; he stood there, aimlessly tapping buttons on his handlink, carefully not looking at me.

"Something's wrong?"

He nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Something's wrong."

For Robert's sake, I made myself keep on playing. "What?" I asked. "I thought that was all there was. Bring him home. Let him die where he belongs, in the place he made, the place he loved. Just this one last thing. And now you're saying there's something more?"

"I'm saying, you changed history, Sam."

It wasn't an accusation, but I reacted as though it were. "Yeah, well, that's what I do. So?"

He sighed, and finally looked at me. "So now, Robert still dies. Only now he dies tonight. And Matthew is arraigned for his murder."

Chopin would have turned in his grave if he'd heard the discord I struck then. " _What?!_ "

Al tapped the screen, read the facts off to me. "It was a mercy killing. He told the court that he couldn't bear to see him - Robert - see him suffer. So he fed him a lethal dose of painkillers, and then put a plastic bag over his face. He didn't even try to cover his tracks ..."

"Matt?" Robert's voice came, faint and quavering, from the bedroom. I exchanged glances with Al, got up, unspeaking, and went to him.

"I'm sorry," I said. "That was ugly, wasn't it? I'll just ..."

He held out his hand. I moved to his side, wrapped my fingers around his. "What?"

"I didn't even consider," he murmured, watching my eyes, "how hard this must be for you. Watching me ... watching me die. Is that ... is that why ...?"

I shook my head vehemently. "No," I told him. "No way. I thought that it would be better for _you_ in the hospital - that they would be able to take better care of you." I sat beside him again, put my arms around the thinness of his shoulders. "Yes, this is hard. Yes, I hate it. But we're _together_. And I would rather be with you, like this, than to have you taken away from me, and not to _know_..."

His arms tightened, oh-so-slightly; then he pulled back. "I'm glad. If I thought you didn't want me ... oh, Matt, if you didn't want me, then I could be dead and in hell already ..."

I wiped away the tears that slid from beneath his closed eyelids. "You won't go to hell, sweetheart. Angels all go to heaven."

He opened one eye, made a face at me. "Some angel," he observed. "I fell from grace a long, long time ago, baby." He made a visible effort to compose himself, succeeding after a fashion; made shooing motions at me. "Go play some more, huh? That's what I really missed in hospital." He made an expansive gesture. "Music!"

I looked back at him over my shoulder, eyebrows raised. "Not my home cooking?" I teased.

He lifted his head. "It might have been," he said with some asperity, "if you ever cooked."

* * *

Robert slept most of the afternoon away. I spent the time prowling the apartment, or sitting hunched in a corner of the couch, clutching a cushion to my stomach, trying not to think; trying to dispel the trapped, panicked feeling that had closed around my gut like cold, dead men's fingers. I didn't have to wonder the _why_ of it. I knew. And I knew now the purpose behind that other Leap.

Without it, how could I have presumed to make this judgement?

 _Life is not just a matter of drawing breath ..._

"All you have to do is say 'no', Sam," Al told me gently. "Just 'no'. He has no right to ask you."

"He has every right," I shot at him. "Have you _seen_ him, Al? If I love him ... how can I let him suffer this way?"

There was a long silence. Then, more quietly than ever, Al asked me, "Do you love him, Sam?"

I drew myself into an even tighter ball, shaking my head distractedly. "I ... yes. _No!_ How can I? I don't even know him. I just ... Jesus!" I burst out. "If he was a fucking _dog_ I'd put it out of its misery. How can I do any less for _him?_ "

"He's not a dog, Sam," was all he said.

"I know that!" I shook my head again, hoping perhaps that it would make my thoughts fall into some kind of order. "It hurts," I finally whispered. "It hurts _me_ to see him like this. It hurts me. It scares me ... I keep thinking, what if the rôles were reversed? What if it were _me_ ... what would _I_ want ...?" I forced a faint smile. "I remember, my mom used to say that we're only given as much as we can bear ... But, you know, I keep thinking, maybe that was an easy thing to say, back in Indiana, back when nothing much seemed too bad at all. And I never heard her say it again after ... after Tom died." I frowned. _Tom died? But ... he'd come home in '71 ... hadn't he ...?_

"People can bear just about anything," Al said, distantly. "If they try to. If they've got enough to live for. Or think they do."

I knew what he meant. Al had endured more in his life than anyone else I knew, had lived through terrible things that I knew would have destroyed _me_. And had, just as Mom's platitude said, somehow emerged from the flame tempered, stronger than ever. _What does not kill us ..._

 _(In my mind a woman's voice that I couldn't identify said acidly, "What doesn't kill us makes us **fat**!")_

"We're all stronger than we believe." He grinned at me suddenly, sidelong. "Look at _you_. Look at the things _you've_ done - Little Mr Please-Don't-Disturb-My-Circles. You've come a long way, baby ..."

I put my feet down, set the cushion back in place. " _I_ don't have a choice," I pointed out.

He just looked at me.

"Yes," he said softly. "Yes, you do, Sam. You've always had a choice. It's just that - sometimes you don't let yourself see it."

* * *

It was three o'clock in the morning when Robert woke and called for me. I'd fallen asleep on the couch, and woke befuddled, unsure of my _who_ and my _where_ as though I had just that instant Leaped in. When he called my name, Matthew's name, a second time, I remembered.

"I'm here," I called, and ran to him, stumbling a little over the fringing on one of the rugs. "What is it?"

His body was shaking, tears streaming uncontrolled down his face. "Matt ... I _hurt_ ..."

"I'll get you something for that." I brightened the lighting a notch, hunted around on the dresser until I found the right bottle. "Here - " I shook out a couple of pills into my hand, fed them to him one by one, held his water beaker to his lips afterward. "Okay? Lie still, now. Give it a chance to work, okay?" I pulled a chair up to the bedside, settled myself next to him. "I'll stay with you. Do you want me to talk?"

"I want to go out," he said querulously. "Take me up on the roof, Matt. I want to see the sky ... I want to feel the air on my skin, I want to hold you ..." His fingers fumbled for mine. "I want to hold you, under the stars, the way we used to ..."

I sighed, shook my head, smiling faintly. "On the roof. In January. This, from the man who's still recovering from his third bout of pneumonia. Sure."

"Recovering!" His voice turned suddenly savage. "I'm never going to _recover_ , Matt. Can't you stop pretending? Can't you see, this is it? I've come home to _die_ , Matthew, and I want to do it on _my_ terms. I'm not going to sit here and wait for it to come to me. I'm going _out_ there - " He had half-lifted his upper body; now he fell back, panting, his strength gone. Only the wild, febrile light of defiance still burned in his eyes, in the reckless curve of his smile. "How many pills still in that bottle, Matt?"

My hand, gently smoothing out the lines in his forehead, stilled, frozen. _This is it ... this is the moment. Point of change, Sam. What's it gonna be? What **he** wants? What he's asking for? Or what **you** think is best for him? What society dictates?_

 _And if you say no - are you saying it because it's what you believe is right, or just because you're afraid? Because you're afraid of having to live with the consequences ...?_

My voice was trembling as I answered him. "Do you love me? Robert, if you love me ... how can you ask me this?"

He turned his head back to me. "Cheap shot, Matt. Unworthy of you. Try this one. If _you_ love _me_ \- how can you not grant me this one last favour?"

"Because your life isn't over yet," I found myself saying. I had made my decision, it seemed, without any kind of conscious volition. "Because _you_ are still alive in there. As long as you're still able to ask me ... until _Robert_ has withered away, until all that there is is a shell ... until then, the answer's no. Has to be no. Because I _do_ love you, Robert. I love you too much to let you go before your time."

Somehow, it was the truth.

And, as it always is, the truth was bitterly painful.

He was crying again. So was I. He held out his arms, and I went to him, lying against him, holding him; held him so until the pills took effect and the web of pain around him loosened enough to let him sleep again.

I slid away; he murmured Matthew's name, and reached for me. I held his fingertips until his breathing eased, his hold slackened; leaned across and kissed him.

I thought it would be goodbye.

I thought that now, surely, _now_ I would Leap ...

But I waited. And I waited.

And nothing changed.

* * *

Morning came, and, if not for the tearstains on Robert's face, the heaviness in my skull, I might have believed that last night had been a nightmare. He _sparkled_. I was terrified. When the doorbuzzer sounded, I practically ran to answer it.

I had almost forgotten. I turned back to him. "Robert? I got you a present yesterday."

The elevator doors slid open, and a young man dressed in white emerged. He smiled at me, waved familiarly at Robert, who stared at him, jaw almost hitting the ground, then grabbed me by the sleeve, pulling me down to his level to hiss in my ear.

"It's the orderly with the muscles!"

"I know," I said, affecting unconcern. "I thought you'd like him. His name's Kenny, by the way," I added.

His lips curved into a smile; he gazed at me, love flowing out of him like waves from a pulsar. "Oh, Matt ... that's sweet. But I don't need him now I've got you."

"That's okay," I told him. "It's called having your beefcake and - " I stopped abruptly, colour flooding into my face until even the tips of my ears must have been scarlet. Robert was doubled up, convulsing, choking with laughter.

" _\- eating it too!_ " he finally managed, and doubled over again. "Oh, Matt, oh, Matt, I do love you so much!"

And I looked at him, and I thought: _if I had done for you what you asked me to do, we would not be sharing this moment now._

 _Don't ever ask me to make that choice again._

* * *

Three days, Al had told me in the hospital. I had thought three days would go by in almost no time at all.

But three days in constant contact with a lover who was _not_ my lover, yet who grew more dear to me with every moment that passed ... knowing that each of those moments took him further away from me ...

Those three days were the longest of my life.

And Matthew had a life of his own. He had been scheduled for a series of lunchtime concerts that week; I cancelled them with barely a second thought. Robert needed me.

 _Me_. Somehow I had stopped remembering Matthew, somewhere before me in time, trapped in the future, alone in the Waiting Room. That twinge of guilt deep inside that I had felt each time that Robert smiled at me, or touched me, called me by an endearment; somehow, somewhere along the line, it had vanished without a trace.

In almost every respect that mattered, I _was_ his lover.

* * *

January. A lull in the fierceness of winter: a bitter wind, but a stay in the snow, a feeble struggle by the sun for renewal of its supremacy.

A chance to grant Robert one small desire.

"I should have spent more time in gardens," he murmured, his voice wistful; he reached out, brushed his hand across a spray of evergreens. "I should have done what I could, while I had the time, to make the world more beautiful. To work with growing things ..."

I leaned forward, wrapped the blanket more closely around his chest. He was already so bundled in sweaters and coats that he looked like a walking Goodwill store; but the air was cold, up on the roof garden, and I was taking no more chances than I had to.

"You were an architect," I reminded him. "You designed cities, built homes, workplaces ... they even gave you prizes." Design awards and trophies, some of them quite prestigious, were jumbled carelessly about the apartment, disregarded. "You made your mark."

His hands clenched about themselves. "I left a _scar_. I designed concrete jungles. Glass monstrosities. Apartment blocks with no allowance for individuals, office developments with windows that wouldn't open ... shopping malls with one token tree per block, fenced around with railings so that no-one would touch ..." His voice was angry. "See what I've become? That tree is _me_. Fenced around, untouchable ..."

His control, tenuous at the best of times, was breaking; mine was gone. "Robert ..." I put out a hand to him, tentatively; he pulled away. I dropped to my knees beside his wheelchair. "Robert - _you_ build the fences. If you won't let your guard down, how can we touch you?"

"Who is there to touch?" he demanded. "My parents disowned me. My partner kicked me out of the firm. My sister thinks I got what was coming to me ... along with half the civilised world ..."

I had, through Al, tried to trace Robert's family; had made the mistake of calling his parents.

The loathing in their voices was something I would not easily forget. And, certainly, never forgive.

My voice was so low and shaky, it was a wonder that he heard me. "Robert ..." I caught breath, the winter air chill in my lungs. "Robert, there's me. I'm still here for you. Don't shut me out."

He looked back at me, his face drawn, set with bitterness. "What's left here for you? All you can do is watch me die. And all I'm likely to do is kill you. Why don't you go, Matt? Can you honestly tell me that you really still want to stay?"

I caught him up. "Yes," I said. "Oh, yes." And I put my arms around him. "Don't you get it, Robert? _You_ are the only reason I'm here at all. I _have_ to be here. I couldn't leave you if I wanted to." Which was true, both for me and for Matthew. "And I don't. I won't." I clung to him more tightly yet; and, after a moment, his hands lifted to clasp my shoulders. "I _can't_ , Robert," I whispered, almost in desperation. "I can't leave you."

He bowed his head, laying it against my chest, and he muttered something that I barely caught.

"What?"

He turned his face to look sidelong up at me. "I said, don't. Please don't. I don't know what I'd do without you, baby. If I die tomorrow, I'll die blessed for loving you." He quirked a crooked grin. "And I might very well die tomorrow ... so let's not waste time fighting. Okay?"

"Okay," I concurred, but couldn't resist adding, "But _you_ started it!"

He hit me. Gently. Well ... fairly gently.

And, after that, there were no more angry words.

* * *

One day. Two days.

Three days.

And Matthew is scheduled to play a concert at Carnegie Hall tonight. A concert that will establish his professional reputation for life.

Unless he doesn't play it ...

"I can't leave him," I said, for what felt like the thousandth time. "How can I leave him? What if ?"

Al sighed. We'd been having this argument, off and on, all day. I was changing, dressing myself up in Matthew's tuxedo, which would have seemed to indicate that Al's persuasions had managed to wear me down; but, in spite of that, I still kept having second thoughts.

Third thoughts. Twentieth and thirtieth and fortieth thoughts.

"Sam," he said patiently. "It's Matthew's whole future that's at stake here. He _has_ to play this concert."

"There'll be other concerts," I found myself saying, without conviction. "Won't there?"

"No, there won't," he said. "Not if he doesn't play this one. If he doesn't show tonight, he's going to spend the rest of his life playing session piano for any third-rate bunch of amateurs who can rent studio time. He's going to get hooked on whisky, and downers, and anything else that he can find to help him make it through the night, and be found dead in a motel room in 1987, choked on vomit in his sleep. Do you want _that_ for him?"

I shook my head slowly. "No. Of course not. But ..."

Al moved around to stand before me, so close that, had he not been a hologram, our hands would almost have touched. "Sam. Listen. We kept Robert from sacrificing his life for Matthew. Don't let Matthew sacrifice his life for Robert. It's too late for Robert. It isn't for Matthew. It isn't for _you_ , Sam ..."

I stood for a moment, just watching him. Then I shook my head, resignedly, defeated. "I know," I said quietly. "I know. I just ... I just need to say goodbye. You know? Give me a minute here?"

He nodded, relief painted plain across his features. "Sure." And he keyed an instruction and his image flipped out.

Robert was lying on the couch, flicking channels on the TV. Game shows, mostly, now. Pretty embarrassing, most of them. He looked up at me, pursed his lips, and whistled appreciatively; reached out a hand.

"Come over here, beautiful." And, when I'd done so, he reached up to me, and pulled me down to him. "You - are - to - _die_ \- for," he whispered, nuzzling against my ear. I winced inwardly at the unthinking expression, but wrapped my arms around him, held him close ...

 _This is the last time, the last time I'll ever see him._

Bent my head and kissed him; sweetly, and lovingly, and deeply.

 _I'll never forget you, Robert ..._

I pulled myself upright, with reluctance. "I have to go," I told him, trying to keep it casual. "You'll be okay? Kenny's got everything in hand?"

He waggled his eyebrows, Groucho Marx fashion. "I don't know what he has in _hand_ , baby ..."

I threw him my best Sam-Beckett-Boy-Scout quelling look, and he spluttered with laughter. "I shocked you!" he crowed. "I still got it!"

I let my features relax into a smile. "You do," I agreed. "You certainly do. Will you be listening?" I tried not to sound pleading, or anxious, but ... the concert was being broadcast live, and ... I don't know. It was _important_ to me that he hear me play, this one final time.

"What're you playing? The _Moonlight?_ "

I nodded. That was the second half of the programme.

" _Then come to me by moonlight_ ," he quoted. " _I'll come to thee by moonlight ... though hell should bar the way_. I'll be listening, baby. There's nothing in _this_ world can stop me."

 _But in the next ...?_

I heard the whine of the Imaging Chamber door behind me, caught its light with my peripheral vision, and half-turned to tell Al I was ready; caught Robert's expression, and swung back.

" _Matt?_ " he asked, shakily.

"What?" I asked. I _knew_ I sounded guilty as sin. _As if I didn't know._

"Matt ... who - is - _that?!_ " His voice was shocked; disbelieving. No wonder. Al was wearing a suit of deep sea-green, its lapels shimmering with satin, and, under it, a shirt patterned like sea-foam and a tie that ran a drop-repeat of seahorses in alternating silver and gold. _Anybody_ would be disbelieving, given the circumstances.

Not for the first time in my life, and almost undoubtedly not for the last, I was completely at a loss for words. In the course of a few short days I had become so thoroughly caught up in Robert's world that I had begun to forget that I was not the man he thought I was, the man he loved; had forgotten, almost, or tried to forget, the lie that I was living, the unforgivable deception.

Now I was suddenly brought face to face with it, abruptly, jarringly, and I didn't know what to say. What _could_ I say? Tell him the truth - that for the last days of his life he had been sharing his closest, his most intimate moments with a man who was a stranger? Or should I just carry on the lie, pretend that I had noticed nothing amiss? He had been spared the dementia that destroys so many AIDS victims' minds; should I let him think that that horror, too, was in store for him?

 _Why had this not occurred to us? Near to death as he is ... why didn't we realise that, like children and madmen, he might be able to tune into my reality?_

 _Oh, god ... he hadn't been able to see Al **before** ; not even half an hour ago._

I turned again, and my eyes met Al's, my thoughts reaching across to him: _Al, he must be so close now ... so close. How can I leave him?_

He smiled at me, warm and reassuring. Then he reached down to his side, and his fingers closed about themselves ...

... about another man's forearm: a startlingly handsome young man with long, ponytailed dark hair, clear blue eyes, a face and physique straight off the cover of a Harlequin romance; a physique that the white knit of a Fermi suit did absolutely nothing to conceal.

Robert said, waveringly, " _Matt?_ What's going on?"

"You have forty nine seconds, Sam," Al warned me. "If you're not out that door, you'll miss your cab, there won't be another one for two minutes thirty five point eight six seconds - thank _you_ , Ziggy - you'll be late for your opening, get into a fight with the promoters, and _still_ end up screwing Matt's career." Matthew said something; Al grinned. "Which he says won't suit him at all. Okay? Get going."

I turned back to Robert; took his hands, looked into his eyes, willing into mine all the depths of love and caring and, yes, _need_ , that I had somehow come to feel for him. "Robert - this is Al. He'll explain everything. If I lied to you - I'm sorry. It was with the best intentions, trust me. And not everything was a lie." I knelt swiftly, leaned forward and kissed him. "I love you. Remember that."

He caught me as I would have pulled away, the strength in his thin hands surprising. "I knew ... I knew there was _something_. Don't worry. It's okay." He pushed me toward the door. "Give 'em hell, baby. Make me proud." And, as the door swung shut behind me, I heard him say definitively, "Mister, I don't know who you are, but if that's the way they're dressing in heaven, then _I'm_ not gonna go ..."

* * *

I caught the cab. I got to Carnegie with minutes to spare. There were smiles and back-slapping and good wishes backstage; and then there was the stage itself, a tiny bastion against the great sweep of the crowded auditorium; and, tinier yet on the expanse of the stage, the piano itself.

I settled myself on the stool; stretched and unstretched my fingers; set them on the keys.

And began.

 _God or fate or time may not be such a bad guy after all_ , I reflected, as the Brahms flowed under my hands. _It didn't dawn on me at first ... but of course. This way, Matthew at least gets to **be** with Robert when he dies; at least gets to see him, even talk with him, through Al ... if only he could **touch** him too ..._

 _And at the same time, he gets to play this concert, make his name, establish his career._

 _So it all ends happily ever after._

 _Well ... as happily as it **can** do ..._

I played well, I think; as well as I knew how. And the crowd gave me their cheers and their applause.

I moved on to the _Moonlight_. And, midway through the _Allegretto_ , glanced up, my attention caught by a sudden flicker, a shimmer of light and motion just at the edge of my awareness.

I thought it was Al, and my heart twisted, knowing that it must be all over. But then I looked again. And I smiled.

I had never seen the young man whose image trembled, hologram-like, not-quite-beyond my awareness. But I had known him.

And, as he departed on his last great journey, he had paused along the way to bid me a final farewell.

And, with it, offer me his forgiveness.

I played to the end, unwavering, unfaltering. Took my bows, acknowledged my public's praise, smiled and waved, smiled again, smiled until my face ached. Went backstage. And was passed a note that I now had no need to read.

"I'll make an announcement," the stage manager told me, laying a comforting hand to my arm. "No-one expects you to do an encore after ..." His voice trailed away; he patted my arm, twice, awkwardly, then moved toward the stage.

I called after him. "No - wait. It's okay. I can do it."

He looked at me carefully. "Are you sure?"

I took a deep breath and nodded. "I'm sure. I _want_ to do it. I _have_ to."

The figure in my peripheral vision now _was_ Al, and he was frowning, fingers pecking at the handlink. "What're you doing, Sam? You've played the concert, Matthew's all set for a brilliant career ... shouldn't you be thinking about Leaping?"

I smiled reassuringly at him. _I'll Leap when I'm good and ready, okay, Al?_

 _Trust me. I know what I'm doing._

 _And **this** is the last thing I can do for Robert._

 _And not only for Robert ..._

I walked forward to centre stage. The lighting crew caught me up in a spotlight with barely a second's pause, almost as smooth as if this had been rehearsed.

Which it hadn't.

"Ladies and gentlemen ..."

My voice was not as strong as it might be - as it _had_ to be. I cleared my throat and began again.

"Ladies and gentlemen ... thank you for the welcome you've given me tonight. I was proud to be asked to play here, and grateful for the opportunity. I hope that the people who gave me this chance are glad now that they did so, and I hope that they'll give me the chance again.

"While I have your attention, there's something that I'd like to say to you. And to everyone out there - " My hand swept the general air, conveying a broad sense of _all of our listeners, out there in radio-land_...

"Some of you will already know about the plague that's sweeping through the community. Some of you may have lost friends to it. Some of you may _not_ know; may _choose_ not to know. But not knowing won't make it go away."

I lifted my head, somehow knowing instinctively how to stand, where to look to make it seem as though I were addressing each person in the audience individually.

"Unless we unite and take action, it will never go away.

"Maybe it's the first of the four horsemen. Maybe we're living the first days of the apocalypse. And, if that's so, then maybe there's nothing to be done.

"Except to go down fighting."

The word rang out like a clarion; I waited for a few seconds, then continued, more softly,

"My lover died tonight. He died of pneumocystis, with what are technically known as 'complications'.

"He died of AIDS. If you're one of the ones who hasn't heard the word before - well, you're hearing it now. Remember it. You'll hear it again. And again, and again, until the government finally takes its head out of the sand and commits itself to taking _action_.

"Gay men have been dying by the hundreds for quite some time now. But my lover didn't die because he was gay. He died because he was given infected blood.

"AIDS is no longer a gay problem, ladies and gentlemen. AIDS is _your_ problem. _Our_ problem. Ours to conquer.

"For Robert Delinsky, the fighting is over. For the rest of us, it's only just beginning.

"And it's to Robert Delinsky that I dedicate the remainder of this concert. For our life together. For the love that we shared. And for the courage and the strength that he showed, right up until the end. Courage and strength that I pray will also be given to me.

"To all of us."

The silence in the hall was deafening. I stood, facing out into the auditorium, refusing to focus on any one of the stunned, shocked, bemused, aghast, angry, frightened, hostile faces ...

 _Let someone out there have heard me ..._

 _Oh, god, Al ... have I just blown Matthew's last chance, after all ...?_

 _When am I going to learn? Show me a soapbox, and I just **have** to stand on it ..._

 _Maybe I can crawl under the piano and hide ..._

Then someone began to applaud. One person, one pair of hands. And then another. And then another ...

And then the waves parted, and the tide rolled forward, a sound of thunder, and then there were voices, there were cheers, and then there were the sounds of movement, of clothes rustling, seats swinging, feet hitting floor as the people rose up like a multitude, and they stood, and they yelled, and they cheered, and they clapped ...

And the clench of fear in my gut relaxed, easing out into warmth, into that blissful, beneficent glow that comes only when a Leap has gone as it should do and which tells me that I, Sam Beckett, _I_ have made a difference.

 _I reached them. Oh, god, I reached them!_

Tomorrow - tomorrow politicians would bluster denial, the right-wing moral minority howl condemnation. But for tonight - here, on the frontlines - tonight, Matthew was a hero.

My hologram was laughing and cheering with the rest, applauding me as best he could around handlink and cigar, trying to call out to me the information that Ziggy was scrolling up, the changes I'd made, the magic I'd wrought ...

I couldn't hear him. But it didn't matter. I _knew_ that I had done well. And that, as soon as I had tied up one final tiny loose end, I would be free to go.

* * *

There was a party after the concert, but no-one expected me to go. I slipped away and caught a cab straight to the hospital.

There were some forms to be signed, arrangements to be made. Nothing that I really felt I could deal with, but which _had_ to be dealt with, nonetheless. It was the least that I could do, for Matthew, to leave his affairs in good order when I went.

And then, one more thing. One more thing that I had to do before I could move on.

* * *

It was so late at night as to be actually early morning when I pulled up outside the brownstone, and it took a good ten minutes of knocking and ringing to persuade Luisa to come to the door. But come she did, eventually, swathed in a ratty old bathrobe and clutching a Louisville slugger that she dropped at sight of me, reaching out and pulling me against her broad bosom. She had heard the concert; it seemed, from the reaction at the hospital, that half the world had heard the concert. Heard my message; heard the warning.

Heeded it? Only time would tell. All I could do was hope.

What can we ever do?

Then, a long, hard drive through the cold and the dark, Luisa by my side and her son, Felipe, swathed in sweaters and coats and a woollen helmet and three pairs of socks, half-lying across the back seat ...

A parking lot; a time of silence, of waiting, Luisa and I sipping coffee from paper cups, Felipe's twisted fingers clutching a beaker of orange juice ...

 _Waiting._

And then, rippling across the ocean, the first rays of sunlight: blackness rimmed with gold, a sliver, a crescent, a half-circle, three-fourths, the full disc ...

Clouds, tinged with pink, lined with scarlet and with gold _(if we could cut cloth from the clouds, how Al would love this!)_ ...

Sky paling from obsidian through indigo to opal ...

A new morning. A new dawn. A new future.

A future in which _everything_ is a possibility ...

... even hope.

Hope, perhaps, most of all.

And, as Felipe holds his hands up to the rising sun, his eyes full of yearning, I know that now, at last, _now_ I can Leap ...

* * *


End file.
